How Not To Teach Your Girls About Purity

Ever since I absorbed the severity of my own lost purity, I have tried to make teaching God’s ideas about our bodies part of my mantra. Now that I have the spiritual responsibility of teaching the girls in my church and my own five daughters, the weight of making the teaching penetrating and impactful is eternally important to me.

I don’t have it all right. But I do know this, there are somethings we really have to stop doing.

Tell girls to wait for the right boy.

Let’s stop telling girls to wait for love. The truth is true love may never come in the form of a boy, a man or a husband. The truest love is from their Creator and no one else.

For your Maker is your husband, the Lord Almighty is his name, the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth…

Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you. (From Isaiah 54)

Tell girls the right boy won’t want you if you are used.

EEK! No! It’s not about the boys. Girls should keep themselves pure and clean and holy because they are made in the image of the pure and clean and holy God.

You must be holy because I, the LORD, am holy. Lev. 20:26

Use the pregnancy scare tactic.

Or STD’s. Pleasing God, staying in his protection and keeping your claim to salvation is a lot more than avoiding pregnancy and chlamydia. God uses his own warning and so should we.

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites… will inherit the kingdom of God. 1 Cor. 6:9-10

Ignore it.

We seriously cannot just chose silence. It is absolutely not what God wants. He wants us teaching the genesis of human sexuality. We have to be open and truthful with our girls. And we have to be purposeful in keeping our girls pure. We have to be intentional in teaching his ways, his boundaries, his values.

Sending our girls out to dances and on dates and in cars with boys and think that their purity is safe is just dumb.

Run from sexual sin! 1 Cor. 6:18

Tell them how dirty sex it.

Do you remember a little verse in the Bible that says they were naked and not ashamed. Or how about all those Songs of Solomon? Sex isn’t dirty. Nothing God made is dirty. God made it and he put it in a relationship that looks like this:

The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs.The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife. 1 Cor. 7:3-4

Tell them how bad boys are.

Boys just want one thing. They are always thinking about how to get it. Ever heard things like that?

There are some sexually hungry, devious boys out there. There are some godly young men too. Here’s the thing- boy’s sex drives are God-given. They need time and training to restrain the power and strength that is tied to their sexuality. Their sexuality isn’t bad. It is the way God made them from the very beginning.

You can never take it back.

I remember being in a teen group and the leader brought in a rose to pass around. As everyone passed the flower, smelled it, touched it and even dropped it, the flower lost its untouched beauty. The teacher compared it girls having sex. The more you are touched…

Its true you will never restore your first purity. But I fear we may be giving this sin too much power. It is a sin. It is not an unforgivable sin. When we accept it, truth is that the blood of lamb covers it, restores it, heals it and redeems it. That means we get a second chance. We get a new life. We get spiritual purification.

If you have been led into sexual sin there is no such thing as too far. Jesus is only one step away. He is the only one who can give you your purity back. All you have to do is ask.

Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. 1 Cor. 6:11